Geology and Genesis: how Noah’s flood shaped ideas but not landscapes

A complex history is recorded in The Rocks Don’t Lie.

While helping at a science outreach booth for a local county fair recently, I became engaged in exactly the joust I had hoped to avoid. A group of young Earth creationists who also had a booth—complete with a poster describing the coexistence of humans and dinosaurs—had landed missionaries on our shores.

I was presented with some remarkable ideas: the earliest fossil assemblages look no different from modern organisms; there was ample room on Noah’s Ark because all species present today are descended from about 8,000 “kinds” that were initially created; radiometric dating of materials has been proven not to work; rocks cannot fold (bend under pressure)—only soft sediment can; the Grand Canyon, far from clearly placing the unfathomable depth of geologic time on display, is actually definitive evidence for Noah’s flood... and on it went. It was quickly clear that the conversation was not really about evidence supporting one position or another. These folks had never gone out to study an outcrop of rock. They weren’t interested in what the rocks had to say—they already knew what the answer had to be.

It’s easy to view the conflict between religion and the science of Earth’s history as a single story arc in which science eventually overcame fundamentalist dogma. But, as is often the case with narrative-driven histories, the truth is a bit messier—and a good deal more interesting—than that.

David R. Montgomery, a geomorphologist at the University of Washington, traces the historical interplay between geology and theology in his new book, The Rocks Don’t Lie. As he explains in the book’s preface, “I started writing this book intending to present a straightforward refutation of creationism, the belief that the world is a few thousand years old and that all the world’s topography—every mountain, hill, and valley—was formed by the biblical Flood. But as I read through old books I learned how stories about enormous floods shaped both scientific and religious views.”

Many cultures have flood legends, and there is often reason to believe the story is rooted in a real flood—just not one that inundated the entire planet. After seeing evidence of what was once a glacial lake in Tibet and hearing a local legend about a guru who brought Buddhism to the region by defeating a lake demon, he writes, “You see, the stories of Noah’s Flood and the Tibetan flood are much the same, except of course that one went viral and we’re still arguing about it.”

Stone ages

The fact that marine fossils were plentiful in rocks on land did not escape the Greeks. Aristotle imagined that continents and seas slowly alternated identities, after sediment from rivers filled in ocean basins. But when Europeans eventually turned their attention to geology, they saw things through a different lens. The recognition that some rocks were composed of sand or mud, and that some even contained the remains of organisms, could only be interpreted in one way—as remnants of Noah’s flood.

When natural philosophers studied the rocks closely enough to complicate that picture, they viewed the rocks as containing new details of Noah’s flood that were missing from the Biblical account. Even Nicolas Steno, whose pioneering work in the 1600s enabled geology to outgrow its infancy, spent most of his energy on creative models of what you might call “flood mechanics” in an attempt to accommodate all his observations.

In a striking blow against the simplified story of religion vs. geology, Montgomery describes the views of the early leaders of the Christian church. Major figures in Christian history—including Origen, Clement, Augustine, Jerome, and Thomas Aquinas—considered literal readings of Genesis to be a sign that one was uneducated. Faced with evidence in nature that contradicted a certain reading of the Bible, all of them decided that the only sensible response was to adjust how they read the Bible. In their view, nature clearly showed the way things were, so any discrepancy had to lie with one’s understanding of scripture. It actually wasn’t until the Protestant Reformation in the 1500s that literalism became prominent.

Montgomery outlines the roles of several major figures in geology, including Georges Cuvier, James Hutton, and Charles Lyell, noting how their ideas were influenced by (or conflicted with) existing views about Noah’s flood. For example, long after it was agreed that rocks represented a record of history that could only be encompassed by millions of years—but before the transport of sediment by massive ice sheets was imaginable—most geologists explained Europe’s glacial deposits as the real remnants of the biblical flood.

It’s in that context that the remarkable story of William Buckland, a prominent theologian and Oxford geologist, played out. Buckland was a staunch proponent of a global flood origin for Europe’s sediment and topography, and he rose to the position of Dean of Westminster in the Anglican Church partly for his work on that topic. Admirably, he later completely and publicly changed his mind when faced with clear evidence that a flood had nothing to do with it—evidence such as the lack of any similar deposits in the tropics.

Dogma strikes back

The book goes on to detail the modern resurrection of fundamentalist opposition to the findings of geology and paleontology. In the early 1900s, a man named George McCready Price attempted to return to the dogma that the slow progress of geology had eroded. Montgomery writes, “Whether ignorant or simply dismissive of centuries of discovery and debate, Price attributed the entire geologic record to Noah’s Flood depositing enormous piles of sediment chock full of fossils… Price accused mainstream geologists of raw prejudice as he never bothered to learn any geology and ignored evidence accumulated by generations of geologists.”

In the 1950s, Price’s work inspired Henry Morris (who later founded the Institute for Creation Research) and John Whitcomb to develop the ideas and materials that would define young Earth creationism straight through to the present day, even as massive scientific developments (like radiometric dating of the Earth and plate tectonics) marched on by.

In an interesting coda, Montgomery relates the geologic community’s reticence to recognize the significance of Washington’s Scablands. In the 1920s, a young geologist named J. Harlen Bretz became convinced that the evidence in the massive, dry canyons of eastern Washington pointed to only one possible sculptor—a catastrophic flood. Having spent the past century dispensing with Noah’s flood as a geologic architect, most geologists knew just one thing about Bretz’s claim: it couldn’t be so.

It would be fifty years before the rest of the field would admit that Bretz was right. (“All my enemies are dead,” he would quip, “I have no one to gloat over.”) It was, in fact, clear that the Scablands had been created by incredible floods unleashed by the draining of a lake of glacial meltwater that once covered 3,000 square miles of Montana. Many scientists simply couldn’t consider this possibility, since it had only just been settled that geology is shaped by gradual change, not catastrophic events.

Decisive here, tentative there

Though the book is about much more than the impossible wrongness of thinking a global flood is a plausible explanation for the complexities in Earth’s crust, there’s still plenty of that to be found. (For example, the evaporite rocks of western Texas are so thick you’d have to evaporate a 450 mile deep ocean to precipitate them. At the maximum rate observed on the Earth, this would take at least 100,000 years.) It’s obvious from the clarity of Montgomery’s straightforward writing that he is an educator. He effectively strings together the key details without hiding them in a dense forest of jargon or self-indulgent storytelling.

There’s only one facet of the book that comes across awkwardly. Montgomery briefly touches on the philosophical rub between science and religion, ostensibly to reach out to believers who are suspicious of science (but also to remind scientists they are not immune to biased thinking). He tries to build bridges, coming close to Stephen Jay Gould’s idea of non-overlapping magisteria, but always qualifying that religion must, of course, yield to the facts of science.

The result is a halting olive branch that almost seems to argue with itself. By trying to criticize both sides equally to create a comfortable middle ground that most people will identify with, Montgomery ends up with a very vague notion that always seems a few steps away from definition. Still, he can hardly be expected to produce gold where thousands before have unsuccessfully scratched in the dirt.

Overall, it’s a great book that could be read for several reasons—whether you want to know why geology doesn’t support the flood story, understand the roots of modern creationism, contemplate a cautionary tale of scientific paradigms, or just learn about the history of Earth science. The respectful way in which it’s written means it could even win over creationists who are willing to critically evaluate their views. After all, as the fathers of the Christian church would have agreed—The Rocks Don’t Lie.

Promoted Comments

I went to a small Christian high school. I was taught young earth creationism and believed it through my teenage years.

I was also taught that a lot of science that disagreed with my beliefs was fraudulent. Looking back, it was an interesting dichotomy. I was taught the scientific method, and I was never taught that scientists in general were liars or frauds. But where the science failed to support the very specific worldview I was being taught, those particular scientists were phonies who were trying to fool people into rejecting God. I certainly don't think the educators were trying to trick us or lie to us. I know some of them still - they're very honest and forthright. They just couldn't accept anything at odds with their worldview.

Oddly, it's not like the school was a bad school overall, and we were all receiving a terrible education. We had a nearly 100% graduation rate, 90% of our graduates went on to secular colleges, and I was able to score in the 98th percentile on my standardized tests. But in areas where apparent fact (so I learned later) were at odds with their very specific teaching they just put blinders on and assumed someone was lying to them.

15 years later, I'm still a Christian, and probably the kind of believer that really annoys non-believers. But I've learned that you can't just reject evidence that goes against your beliefs and choose instead to grasp at the straws of pseudoscience that begins with a conclusion and works backwards from there. If your faith can't survive when faced with evidence, what kind of flimsy religion are you professing?

606 Reader Comments

I cannot say I agree with this. I would agree that many interpretations arise an about face to cultural conflicts and are weak (to be generous) interpretations. But the counter effect is also a push for less-contemporary and more “grammatical historical” approaches outside the current conflict.

e.g. I would apply this to Genesis 1 and the best approach that gives due weight to the literary, grammatical, and historical issues is the "Cosmic Temple" view of Genesis which John Walton has attempted to champion (although scholars have been noting this for decades and was common in Jewish circles). The short summary is that just like other ANE temples (which were microcosmos) the Israelite tabernacle, which draws upon bog standard vocabulary, is viewed as a microcosmos (Exodus 25-31) with a slew of literary connections with Genesis 1. Other Hebrew creation texts are in the language of cosmic temples (e.g. Psalm 104) and Genesis 1 draws upon this likewise rich literary tradition (7 days, rest, image of God, form and function, etc).

From a literary/historical perspective, trying to understand Genesis 1 as a work that has roots in the 12th-6th c. BCE, Genesis 1 looks like a Cosmic Temple text. A number of grammatical clues indicate the author had this intention. Reading it as such -- while of little use to the modern debate of material origins -- has good historical and grammatical footing but also makes it of less value in terms of "dating creation" but does so without engaging (the silly imo) non-overlapping Magisterium.

All that to say I think the best historical-grammatical approach does the opposite of “lax of language” but it also fails to answer the driving questions from either side of the modern debate, hence why the same circular argument continues as they attempt to prove/disprove certain claims which probably were never intended in the text.

“…it also fails to answer the driving questions from either side” because you are stripping the text of meaning until it is vague enough that it isn’t even wrong. You can dress that up as “well they probably didn’t mean to make this claim” but that again becomes an ongoing issue. When does that stop? Well you say we’ll stop it at this book or that verse…and now we are now outside the area where we have something falsifiable…for today. And we’ll extend that somewhere else tomorrow, as need be. That has been the history and that is why I find it reeks of post hoc rationalization.

Further, once you start down the road of “well that is how they saw the world so they wrote it down that way, that’s why the had pi = 3” you open the can of worms that the book was written by people that lacked an understanding that we have. Written for a simpler time, with a roughness and lack of understanding to allow for more precise actions and the ability to fully cook their food and know enough to avoid tainted shellfish rather than the good ones, and so on. It loses it’s mantle of omnipotence, and suddenly it becomes a lot more like moral guidelines of a living document. But because it never got updated (the RCC does have their collection of assorted dogma and documents and beliefs they’ve generated outside the Bible but it has never really been incorporated back in) it becomes extremely dated and thus extremely cumbersome to use.

P.S. But really the Bible’s biggest clash with science, something core it and thus shared by the 3 major branch’s of Judaism/Christianity/Islam, is its clash with human reasoning. At the core only G-d is the ultimate source, the gatekeeper of all truth, rather than a human being being able to piece things together from evidence. Everything must go back to G-d, and the communication channel with him is…suspect. Science is very much about a person being able to independently verify an assertion, in spite of practical considerations of attempting to verify all assertions. At the core JCI has the axion that only G-d can do that. This is why Buddhism co-exists much more readily with science, it can be stripped of the mystic and not fall apart. Strip the mystic out of JCI and you are left with very, very little.

Science is far more compatible with some religions than others. We need not beat religion out of ourselves, or twist our minds into untenable knots to hold both inside ourselves. But JCI is such that it is a really poor match for it.

P.S.S. The Common Wisdom I’ve heard over and over, an attempt at some sort of middle ground, is that the Bible is just a moral guide for living, and it is good at that. Well I find it very poor at that. Using it as a moral guide is like searching for peanuts in elephant dung. Yes, they are in there but…

There is nothing in the scientific record that disproves creationism (and by that I mean simply the notion that life on earth was created by a vastly superior intelligence, which to me makes far more sense than the notion that living cells simply pop into being from batches of inanimate chemicals as a matter of Russian roulette, though with fantastically greater odds against.)

How much do the Russian Roulette odds of creating an entire universe, popping into being from batches inanimate chemicals, improve when you throw an invisible creator with no materials, no knowledge and no help, into the mix?

I went to a small Christian high school. I was taught young earth creationism and believed it through my teenage years.

I was also taught that a lot of science that disagreed with my beliefs was fraudulent. Looking back, it was an interesting dichotomy. I was taught the scientific method, and I was never taught that scientists in general were liars or frauds. But where the science failed to support the very specific worldview I was being taught, those particular scientists were phonies who were trying to fool people into rejecting God. I certainly don't think the educators were trying to trick us or lie to us. I know some of them still - they're very honest and forthright. They just couldn't accept anything at odds with their worldview.

Oddly, it's not like the school was a bad school overall, and we were all receiving a terrible education. We had a nearly 100% graduation rate, 90% of our graduates went on to secular colleges, and I was able to score in the 98th percentile on my standardized tests. But in areas where apparent fact (so I learned later) were at odds with their very specific teaching they just put blinders on and assumed someone was lying to them.

15 years later, I'm still a Christian, and probably the kind of believer that really annoys non-believers. But I've learned that you can't just reject evidence that goes against your beliefs and choose instead to grasp at the straws of pseudoscience that begins with a conclusion and works backwards from there. If your faith can't survive when faced with evidence, what kind of flimsy religion are you professing?

The most alarming thing to me from this thread is the number of people who look at that Gallup poll and inexplicably conclude that 46% of Americans are YEC. I mean, I know this country has a dramatic lack of education in statistics as well as polling, but for that many people to arrive at that conclusion and for it to be left unchallenged is simply staggering. Believe it or not, people can (prepare yourselves for this, it might blow your mind) believe that God created man literally in the method stated in Genesis (i.e. forming him from the earth) and still believe that the Earth is older than 6000 years or whatever the crazies are saying now. That question literally asks one thing, and only one thing (while phrasing it in a way that would make any qualified judge of such things embarrassed of the industry). That thing is whether they believe that God directly created man. It doesn't mean they don't believe in evolution (they might not). It doesn't mean they believe the Earth is 6000 years old (they might). It doesn't mean they think that fossils are fakes, placed by God to test our faith (they might). It doesn't mean they think coveting their neighbor's wife will damn them to hell (they might). All it means is that they believe God created man directly. Nothing more, although considering the poor question wording, very likely less.

The most alarming thing to me from this thread is the number of people who look at that Gallup poll and inexplicably conclude that 46% of Americans are YEC. I mean, I know this country has a dramatic lack of education in statistics as well as polling, but for that many people to arrive at that conclusion and for it to be left unchallenged is simply staggering. Believe it or not, people can (prepare yourselves for this, it might blow your mind) believe that God created man literally in the method stated in Genesis (i.e. forming him from the earth) and still believe that the Earth is older than 6000 years or whatever the crazies are saying now. That question literally asks one thing, and only one thing (while phrasing it in a way that would make any qualified judge of such things embarrassed of the industry). That thing is whether they believe that God directly created man. It doesn't mean they don't believe in evolution (they might not). It doesn't mean they believe the Earth is 6000 years old (they might). It doesn't mean they think that fossils are fakes, placed by God to test our faith (they might). It doesn't mean they think coveting their neighbor's wife will damn them to hell (they might). All it means is that they believe God created man directly. Nothing more, although considering the poor question wording, very likely less.

I'm not sure what your wording nitpick is all about. Here's the actual question:

There is nothing in the scientific record that disproves creationism (and by that I mean simply the notion that life on earth was created by a vastly superior intelligence, which to me makes far more sense than the notion that living cells simply pop into being from batches of inanimate chemicals as a matter of Russian roulette, though with fantastically greater odds against.)

The odds of an all knowing, all powerful creator ghost who wants a planet full of self-aware apes to play with are better than the odds that we live in a universe compatible with the anthropic principle? And the fact that this this creator ghost likes to sit on your pillow at bedtime and make a todo list from your prayers is just icing on the cake?

I just don't get the mental machinations Christians have to live with to get through their day. The universe doesn't give a shit about you; get used to it.

There is nothing in the scientific record that disproves creationism (and by that I mean simply the notion that life on earth was created by a vastly superior intelligence, which to me makes far more sense than the notion that living cells simply pop into being from batches of inanimate chemicals as a matter of Russian roulette, though with fantastically greater odds against.)

There is nothing in the scientific record that disproves creationism (and by that I mean simply the notion that life on earth was created by a vastly superior intelligence, which to me makes far more sense than the notion that living cells simply pop into being from batches of inanimate chemicals as a matter of Russian roulette, though with fantastically greater odds against.)

Can I second one of the early posts ... Ars, are you seriously going to the dogs?

Fact: you won't convince Christians that their beliefs are wrong - there's too much vested in it all. Do you think you'll convince society that Pepsi is better than Coca-Cola?

Let me give you a simple true example when talking to my mother (who is very clever, and a Christian)

Me: Is the bible the word of God?Her: Yes.Me: And God is perfect?Her: Yes.Me: Quotes bible about "talking donkeys, and God killing a man because he didn't impregnate his brother's wife" as two of many examples of things that just don't make sense to me.Her: Needs to be "interpreted"Me: God is perfect - no translation requiredHer: Old testamentMe: Word of God - God is perfectHer: Let's change topic.

You can not use logic on a Christian, or a scientologist, or <insert other religion> - it just doesn't work.Please do me a favour and leave religion at the door when it comes to sites like Ars.

There is nothing in the scientific record that disproves creationism (and by that I mean simply the notion that life on earth was created by a vastly superior intelligence, which to me makes far more sense than the notion that living cells simply pop into being from batches of inanimate chemicals as a matter of Russian roulette, though with fantastically greater odds against).

Who created God? Where did he/she/it come from? Something must have created them in the fist place?

There is nothing in the scientific record that disproves creationism (and by that I mean simply the notion that life on earth was created by a vastly superior intelligence, which to me makes far more sense than the notion that living cells simply pop into being from batches of inanimate chemicals as a matter of Russian roulette, though with fantastically greater odds against).

Who created God? Where did he/she/it come from? Something must have created them in the fist place?

Can I second one of the early posts ... Ars, are you seriously going to the dogs?

Fact: you won't convince Christians that their beliefs are wrong - there's too much vested in it all. Do you think you'll convince society that Pepsi is better than Coca-Cola?

Let me give you a simple true example when talking to my mother (who is very clever, and a Christian)

Me: Is the bible the word of God?Her: Yes.Me: And God is perfect?Her: Yes.Me: Quotes bible about "talking donkeys, and God killing a man because he didn't impregnate his brother's wife" as two of many examples of things that just don't make sense to me.Her: Needs to be "interpreted"Me: God is perfect - no translation requiredHer: Old testamentMe: Word of God - God is perfectHer: Let's change topic.

You can not use logic on a Christian, or a scientologist, or <insert other religion> - it just doesn't work.Please do me a favour and leave religion at the door when it comes to sites like Ars.

That's rather easy to get around, if you mother is that clever. Unlike the Qur'an, the Bible has been translated so many times over the years that it would be surprising if the original texts looked anything like what we see today.

Muslims don't have a nice get-out clause like that though. Even though very few people understand classical Arabic, they do exist.

Recently I had a new coworker that believes in creationism and we had some arguments. This got me thinking how is that society these days seems to go backwards and instead of accepting more science turns back to religious dogma. My conclusion is that as Arthur Clarke informs us "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic". In recent years science has become too advanced and following the chain of proofs is practically impossible for the regular person. Science has become magic so people (even those who are intelligent and educated in their field) have to choose between one magic and another. Guess who has more experience and is better at convincing people in magic - scientists or priests!

I have come to this conclusion as well.

For many, if not most Americans, science and technology crossed the magic threshold some time back.

... which to me makes far more sense than the notion that living cells simply pop into being from batches of inanimate chemicals as a matter of Russian roulette, though with fantastically greater odds against.) .

As a student, I routinely came across articles describing the genesis of amino acid precursors within hours of starting experiments replicating conditions that are believed to have existed early on in Earth's existence. It is far more likely to have had further combination of these precursors than any other event, given the absence of substantial, verifiable data.

... which to me makes far more sense than the notion that living cells simply pop into being from batches of inanimate chemicals as a matter of Russian roulette, though with fantastically greater odds against.) .

As a student, I routinely came across articles describing the genesis of amino acid precursors within hours of starting experiments replicating conditions that are believed to have existed early on in Earth's existence. It is far more likely to have had further combination of these precursors than any other event, given the absence of substantial, verifiable data.

Yes, that's right. It's the Miller-Urey experiment. Here's a video of it from Carl Sagan's Cosmos: A Personal Voyage.

Meh I'll just go with the idea God operates on a different time scale then us puny mortals as it's "GOD" we're talking about here and as such God is about 2-3 minutes into his 7th day of rest

Why should he ? Because some trippy proto jewish Highpriest in the middle East wrote some heavily and constantly revised "scriptures " how he imagines the world to be created ? And why the jewish people ar especially entitled ? About 800 years before the crucification ? Constantly revised ever since - just go, ask the Council of Nicaea? I mean go, try reading a bible from 300 AD and ... ahem go see the differences in content and setup.... and then have some study of the early Aramaeic versions...

But still....some biblical word is perfect because one's reading the 50th version of it, in the sixth or seventh language it has been translated into ? I mean, who precisely did God tell the story to in the first place ?

... which to me makes far more sense than the notion that living cells simply pop into being from batches of inanimate chemicals as a matter of Russian roulette, though with fantastically greater odds against.) .

As a student, I routinely came across articles describing the genesis of amino acid precursors within hours of starting experiments replicating conditions that are believed to have existed early on in Earth's existence. It is far more likely to have had further combination of these precursors than any other event, given the absence of substantial, verifiable data.

Nevermind the universe had all the time in existence to get it right... and basically we wouldn't be writing this if it hadn't happened. Because we are watching the event fro "down the tunnel of time", and to make that observation, life has to exist first and foremost.

Meanwhile, on some unknown stars (or wherever), life took a different path, to exist or not and what shape to take

There is nothing in the scientific record that disproves creationism (and by that I mean simply the notion that life on earth was created by a vastly superior intelligence, which to me makes far more sense than the notion that living cells simply pop into being from batches of inanimate chemicals as a matter of Russian roulette, though with fantastically greater odds against.)

The odds of an all knowing, all powerful creator ghost who wants a planet full of self-aware apes to play with are better than the odds that we live in a universe compatible with the anthropic principle? And the fact that this this creator ghost likes to sit on your pillow at bedtime and make a todo list from your prayers is just icing on the cake?

I just don't get the mental machinations Christians have to live with to get through their day. The universe doesn't give a shit about you; get used to it.

Oh but it's really simple. let me quote him again:

Quote:

I mean simply the notion that life on earth was created by a vastly superior intelligence, which to me makes far more sense than the notion that living cells simply pop into being from batches of inanimate chemicals as a matter of Russian roulette, though with fantastically greater odds against

So it's simple: a combination of lack of imagination (not being able to "gasp" the notion of time), intellectual laziness (unwillingness to make even the most basic research, relying instead on "gut feeling"). After all, it's way easier to make up explanation as you go in order to convince yourself that the world is the way you want than try to understand facts and their implication. It's more comfortable too.

I am a Christian, as well as Nerd/Geek like the many of you, and I would like to offer an apology for many of my friends who refuse to use their minds. I believe God gave us that mind to understand and marvel at creation and science is the tool to do that.

It is my personal belief that those who insist to read Genesis as literal dogma are doing so out of fear and self imposed ignorance. Since fear is the opposite of faith then that seems like an oxymoron to me.

The book of Romans says that we will know the nature of God by His creation, since there is no falsehood in God then the world we can see and study should not be skewed to meet a narrow interpretation of the rest of the book.

For those who may wish to reply to this please understand I know you have your own beliefs and do not demand them of you, I am just trying to speak consistency and clear thinking to my 'compatriots'.

So Genesis is not literal dogma but Romans is?

The meaning of "literal" when talking about understanding any book involves treating it as the kind of literature that it is. I.e. you don't try to understand poetry like you would a science text. Different forms of literature make different points in different ways, and have different purposes. The early chapters of Genesis are clearly in the form of a poem, and should be understood through that lens. Other parts of Genesis may also be in the form of allegory, with critical differences of philosophy and theology to other contemporary creation stories, although it's hard to be sure whether that is what was intended by the authors. Other parts are law, history, wisdom literature, collections of sayings, prophecy, etc. Romans, and the other epistles are of course instructional letters, and should be understood as such. This implies that their meaning is to be taken as a plain reading of the authors intent.

Can I second one of the early posts ... Ars, are you seriously going to the dogs?

Fact: you won't convince Christians that their beliefs are wrong - there's too much vested in it all. Do you think you'll convince society that Pepsi is better than Coca-Cola?

Let me give you a simple true example when talking to my mother (who is very clever, and a Christian)

Me: Is the bible the word of God?Her: Yes.Me: And God is perfect?Her: Yes.Me: Quotes bible about "talking donkeys, and God killing a man because he didn't impregnate his brother's wife" as two of many examples of things that just don't make sense to me.Her: Needs to be "interpreted"Me: God is perfect - no translation requiredHer: Old testamentMe: Word of God - God is perfectHer: Let's change topic.

You can not use logic on a Christian, or a scientologist, or <insert other religion> - it just doesn't work.Please do me a favour and leave religion at the door when it comes to sites like Ars.

God is perfect, but the Bible is not God. Also, we are not perfect. Given that there are many many interpretations of scripture, by both believers and non-believers we can safely assume that it is more than possible that many, perhaps even all interpretations and understandings are wrong to a greater or lesser degree, just as all scientific theories are wrong (but hopefully getting more subtly wrong with each iteration).Also, something is not wrong simply because it doesn't make sense to you. Very few people can properly be said to understand the latest developments in string theory or quantum physics. Does that fact make them wrong? If there is a God, then why can't he make a donkey talk? Your position seems to be no more than the same argument from incredulity that most young earthers make, just from the other end.

The meaning of "literal" when talking about understanding any book involves treating it as the kind of literature that it is. I.e. you don't try to understand poetry like you would a science text.

I appreciate that you seem to have a more reasonable understanding of how to read ancient texts than most Bible literalists I've heard from, but even still isn't this a rather large distortion of the meaning of the word 'literal'? How does one 'literally' read poetry? It sounds to me like what you really mean to say is 'literately'.

A few days of deeply frustrating articles (frustrating only because of the Christian defenders, excusers, and apologists).

Is it conceivable that contemporary religion will eventually quit trying to use reason to justify itself? It may honestly have once been a rational exercise but I don't know of many adults that believe Santa Clause is a real being.

The disire to exert control over our environment can lead to non-rational behavior (the baseball pitcher who believes he'll do better if he wears his lucky shirt). Once you recognize that modern religion is no more than a mistaken attempt to understand and control the environment, you may dispense with it. Not that childhood indoctrination, butressed by fear, is easy to overcome -- but it's worth it.

There's a scientific line of attack against God, which goes from lack of testable evidence and theoretical impossibility due to information theory.

There's a logical attack, which shows that God can't be moral if he is powerful.

The first one is on stronger ground, game over. But if you want to keep playing even though the game has finished, the second is interesting too. There are arguments like "suffering is a necessary by product of free will" which gets used a lot even though it is patently obvious that not all suffering is caused by humans. Or "you deserve punishment though you did nothing wrong". Where all this ends up is in evolutionary psychology, and anthropology.

When it comes to the harm religion causes, the Enlightenment showed they could be largely mitigated. What we find is that in conditions of stress in society, it crops up as an unquestionable argument for aggressive behavior. It's also a prop for centralization of power. The solution to the problem isn't getting rid of religion but in addressing the underlying social stress, and also in Enlightenment philosophy.

One problem Christians and other fundamentalists have is that from an early age they have been taught they are 'special'. That God made them in his image, he sacrificed his only son to save us and in my conversations with Christians only humans have souls. So they are 'special'. In fact they even more 'special' since they are the only ones that get to go to heaven, everyone else will burn in hell.Now they are told about evolution, that we all emerged from a few chemicals, to microbes all the way up to human beings. The two ideas do not compute, you can't be 'special' AND evolve from slime. There we have the problem, it's very hard to get past the brainwashing and the ego deflation.

There's a scientific line of attack against God, which goes from lack of testable evidence and theoretical impossibility due to information theory.

There's a logical attack, which shows that God can't be moral if he is powerful.

The first one is on stronger ground, game over. But if you want to keep playing even though the game has finished, the second is interesting too. There are arguments like "suffering is a necessary by product of free will" which gets used a lot even though it is patently obvious that not all suffering is caused by humans. Or "you deserve punishment though you did nothing wrong". Where all this ends up is in evolutionary psychology, and anthropology.

When it comes to the harm religion causes, the Enlightenment showed they could be largely mitigated. What we find is that in conditions of stress in society, it crops up as an unquestionable argument for aggressive behavior. It's also a prop for centralization of power. The solution to the problem isn't getting rid of religion but in addressing the underlying social stress, and also in Enlightenment philosophy.

Thank you so much for this article. So many people don't realize that fundamentalism in religion is a modern movement, which seeks to apply the principles of the age of enlightenment to religious thought. This is as true in Islam as it is in Christianity. The people who think they are getting back to fundamentals, the Wahhabis, Salafis and Southern Baptists (though not all of them), are actually following a modern movement.

I would apply one caveat, science is not the ultimate arbiter - it is an observer and a predictor, but is always incomplete, at least up to now.

The meaning of "literal" when talking about understanding any book involves treating it as the kind of literature that it is. I.e. you don't try to understand poetry like you would a science text.

I appreciate that you seem to have a more reasonable understanding of how to read ancient texts than most Bible literalists I've heard from, but even still isn't this a rather large distortion of the meaning of the word 'literal'? How does one 'literally' read poetry? It sounds to me like what you really mean to say is 'literately'.

The point is that Christians (and others) are struggling to reconcile the claim that scripture is "god breathed", or the word of God, and thus Truth, with the apparent paradoxes that such a claims throws up. Many Christians would say the the Bible, plainly read, is the infallible word of God, and that axiom leads them to say that the story of Adam and Eve is intended to be understood as history, but I believe that is an axiom without a biblical basis, and tends to lead to insufficiently contextualising scripture and thus wrong conclusions about the point the scripture is making.When faced with these problems people tend to fall into one of two camps. Either scripture is wrong, or science is wrong, and since scripture is "Truth", it must be the science which is wrong, and the culture war tends to polarise opinion more than actual consideration of the actual problem. What many forget is that there is a third option which is that both science and scripture are true, but that our understanding of one or the other may be wrong.

As regards "literal":"Literal - Conforming or limited to the simplest, nonfigurative, or most obvious meaning of a word or words."Taking a famous poem, consider

Quote:

I wandered lonely as a cloud. That floats on high o'er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils;

What is the simplest, nonfigurative, or most obvious meaning? That Wordsworth was a cloud, or that he was walking randomly by himself in the valleys and hills? Obviously it is somewhat figurative, but it's not as figurative as an interpretation that it was simply his mind that was wandering and imagining.

There's a scientific line of attack against God, which goes from lack of testable evidence and theoretical impossibility due to information theory.

Theoretical impossibility eh? That sounds fascinatingly comical. Have any links?

Quote:

There's a logical attack, which shows that God can't be moral if he is powerful.

The first one is on stronger ground, game over. But if you want to keep playing even though the game has finished, the second is interesting too. There are arguments like "suffering is a necessary by product of free will" which gets used a lot even though it is patently obvious that not all suffering is caused by humans. Or "you deserve punishment though you did nothing wrong". Where all this ends up is in evolutionary psychology, and anthropology.

This one is easy. If God exists as described by the bible, then by definition He is the creator and source of the universal morality, and thus must be perfectly moral. That such a morality appears to be in conflict with a human perspective of morality, with our inherent sinfulness, limited knowledge and reasoning capacity merely serves to highlight our inability to be perfect. In other words, who are we to question an omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent God? That you don't like it doesn't constitute an argument about existence of God one way or another.

...there is a third option which is that both science and scripture are true, but that our understanding of one or the other may be wrong.

Science IS our best effort at a self-correcting mechanism to shareable knowledge. With what mechanism does one discover what "scripture" is subject to interpretation and what isn't? Look, Yahweh isn't making any public appearences to clear any of it up.

There's no special truth revealed in any "sacred" writing no matter how you read it UNLESSS you're foolish enough to buy the premise of divinity. The Bible is quite useful as a literary work and as an anthropological device.

It always amazes me that anyone can reference the Bible as requiring study to comprehend while simultaneously asserting its divine inspiration. Some people must be too stupid for Yahweh to explain things clearly to.

Contradiction piled upon contradiction with an aparent inability to say anything other than, "We'll understand after we're dead."

Only a tiny minority of Christians believe in the "Young Earth" argument. Most have no problem reconciling science with their beliefs.

"Young Earth" ideas are clearly silly, people who still hold this clearly have little grasp of scripture and little or no interest in been objective in the face of the overwhelming geological evidence.But even though for the most part i agree with the quoted statement, there are still some serious head scratches in the bible vs. science debate eg. 'Natural selection' may have some biblical standing - there seems to be clear evidence for this. the Noah narrative in scripture clear state "there kind", allowing for selective breading due to the prevailing condition at the time, it is reasonable to except Natural Selection as part of the creative process.But evolution or the random series of events from the big bang till now, does not seem to be reconcilable. And so far i have not found a reasonable scientific explanation which leads us the the creating/development of life on earth.If anyone has links to good scientific papers that the layman can read and understand i would appreciated the links and the downloads.

...there is a third option which is that both science and scripture are true, but that our understanding of one or the other may be wrong.

Science IS our best effort at a self-correcting mechanism to shareable knowledge. With what mechanism does one discover what "scripture" is subject to interpretation and what isn't? Look, Yahweh isn't making any public appearences to clear any of it up.

Yes He is. A fundamental tenet of Christianity is that He did both in the person of Jesus Christ, and in the current age by the Holy Spirit. That God reveals Himself to believers through these mechanisms is just about the most fundamental of all doctrines, and also the common experience of believers throughout the last 2000 years. You might not agree, and that you may not see any evidence of this, but the promise of the Bible is that "Seek and you shall find". When was the last time you actually sought God?

...there is a third option which is that both science and scripture are true, but that our understanding of one or the other may be wrong.

Science IS our best effort at a self-correcting mechanism to shareable knowledge. With what mechanism does one discover what "scripture" is subject to interpretation and what isn't? Look, Yahweh isn't making any public appearences to clear any of it up.

Yes He is. A fundamental tenet of Christianity is that He did both in the person of Jesus Christ, and in the current age by the Holy Spirit. That God reveals Himself to believers through these mechanisms is just about the most fundamental of all doctrines, and also the common experience of believers throughout the last 2000 years. You might not agree, and that you may not see any evidence of this, but the promise of the Bible is that "Seek and you shall find". When was the last time you actually sought God?

I am not going to get into a theological debate, but i would like to add God (yahwah) and Jesus (God's son) are clearly two different individuals and know where in the bible does it indicate they are they are same person or part of a trinity. The trinity doctrine was added by the church and is not in scripture.

Look, Yahweh isn't making any public appearences to clear any of it up.

Yes He is. A fundamental tenet of Christianity is that He did both in the person of Jesus Christ, and in the current age by the Holy Spirit. That God reveals Himself to believers through these mechanisms is just about the most fundamental of all doctrines, and also the common experience of believers throughout the last 2000 years. You might not agree, and that you may not see any evidence of this, but the promise of the Bible is that "Seek and you shall find". When was the last time you actually sought God?

Right. "Let go and let God" huh? You're another true believer come to save your ancient myth? Please explain why an all-powerful, loving being refuses to communicate in any way that's observable in the same way as everything else about the Universe? For fuck's sake, man, do you have any idea of the scope of real human knowledge?

How does Yahweh communicate with you? What's He told you recently? Is there any way I can verify any of your claims about Him? If I can't, and you insist on that being's reality outside of your own mind, you've excluded yourself from rational discourse on the topic.

Understand? You've left the boundaries of functional communication. If I say I know something but can't demonstrate it, I don't know it. Humanity used to have room for divinity because it filled the gaps in our knowledge of the world. There is a constant struggle to actually understand our observations. Understanding religious belief may help us understand how our collective brains work but that's about it.

...there is a third option which is that both science and scripture are true, but that our understanding of one or the other may be wrong.

Science IS our best effort at a self-correcting mechanism to shareable knowledge. With what mechanism does one discover what "scripture" is subject to interpretation and what isn't? Look, Yahweh isn't making any public appearences to clear any of it up.

Yes He is. A fundamental tenet of Christianity is that He did both in the person of Jesus Christ, and in the current age by the Holy Spirit. That God reveals Himself to believers through these mechanisms is just about the most fundamental of all doctrines, and also the common experience of believers throughout the last 2000 years. You might not agree, and that you may not see any evidence of this, but the promise of the Bible is that "Seek and you shall find". When was the last time you actually sought God?

When was the last time you sought Thor, or Jupiter? What makes your position any more correct than a thousand other deities before and alongside yours?

If a Christian tells me to seek Jesus, and a Buddhist tells me to seek enlightenment, with neither actually being able to demonstrate or guarantee anything, why should I believe either?